Biography

Michael C. Crair is the William Ziegler III Professor in the Department of Neuroscience, Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Deputy Dean for Scientific Affairs (Basic Science Departments). Dr. Crair obtained his doctoral degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral training in physics and neuroscience at Kyoto University and Kyoto Prefectural Medical School in Japan and in neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. He was a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas before coming to Yale as a member of the Department of Neuroscience in 2007. He has directed Yale’s Vision Core Program, the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and was Deputy Chair of the Department of Neuroscience until 2017, when he became Deputy Dean for Scientific Affairs (Basic Science Departments).

Dr. Crair maintains an active research program, developing advanced imaging techniques to study neural circuit development. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of neural activity in the developing brain, for instance by demonstrating that early spontaneous neuronal activity is an essential part of normal brain development. He is currently exploring the mechanisms by which this activity is generated and how it shapes brain circuit development. He has been awarded numerous honors for his research and teaching, including the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Foundation Fellowship Award in the Neurosciences, the Marc Dresden Excellence in Graduate Education Award, and a NARSAD-Sidney R. Baer Jr. Foundation Young Investigator Award. He has also been named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, a John Merck Fund Scholar and the March of Dimes Foundation's Basil O'Connor Fellow.

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Pattern of projections from eye to brain in mice. Retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axon projections from the retina to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (LGN) and superior colliculus (SC) are mapped with respect to retinotopic origin. In the retinotopic map the D-V axis of the retina is mapped onto the L-M axis of the SC and the N-T axis of the retina is mapped onto the C-R axis of the SC. D, V, N, T: Dorsal, ventral, nasal, temporal. L, M, C, R: Lateral, medial, caudal, rostral.

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